Politics and Health Care

ILC's Letter to Editor Urges Policy Makers to Take Action

A story last week in The New York Times reporting on a study showing the U.S. spends over twice as much as most other industrialized countries for health care, yet places last in preventing deaths, was answered by members of the ILC’s World Cities Project. In a letter to the editor, co-directors Victor G. Rodwin, Ph.D. and Michael K. Gusmano, Ph.D., and researcher Daniel Weisz, M.D., reminded readers and policy makers that, while it is important to compare health care costs and quality, we must look beyond the numbers in order to make sense of the reasons behind the trends.

The mission of the World Cities Project, a joint effort with New York University's Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service and Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, is to compare and analyze health, social services, and quality of life for persons age 65 in the cities of New York, London, Paris and Tokyo. Their research has shown that two key factors — access to disease prevention services, and improvements in social and environmental health factors — are critical to improving overall population health. One way access can be improved, they argue, is through universal health care coverage.

Indeed, the central finding of the Commonwealth Fund study, the second of its kind, found that access not only to disease prevention, but to any kind of health care, had deteriorated since its last study in 2006. Today, some 75 million in the country lack sufficient health insurance.

As urbanization and population aging increases throughout the world, we need models of how to accommodate these population shifts, as well as analyses of best practices. Click here to learn more about how the World Cities Project is responding to that challenge.

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Related Links: View all ILC Reports on Politics and Health Care

Keywords: politics, healthcare, hospitalization, disease prevention

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